


cold shadow

by antinomian



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghosts, Haunting, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Suicide, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25837984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antinomian/pseuds/antinomian
Summary: Mosley doesn't mention what Thomas said to Baxter. A shade clings to the house.
Relationships: Charles Carson/Elsie Hughes
Comments: 21
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> reading that fic where thomas can see ghosts after he almost dies reminded me of a thing i started ages ago where he does die and becomes a ghost. dusted it off a bit and idk really where it's going but i actually think it might NOT be super depressing

It's nearly dinner, and it has just occurred to Charles that he hasn't seen Thomas in hours. It's only family tonight, so it isn't like he's needed, per say, but there is still work to be done that he is almost certainly not doing. 

"Andrew," he stops the boy on his way to the kitchen, where he would have been too earlier to do ought but distract Daisy.

"Yes, Mr. Carson?"

"Do you know the whereabouts of Mr. Barrow?"

Andrew furrows his brow. "In the bath, if I had to guess. The door was locked last time I was up there, at least."

Charles hums and tells Andrew to carry on. He pulls his watch from his pocket and checks the time; too close to dinner, now, to go looking for him all the way in the attics. If he hasn't turned up by the time dinner is over, Charles decides, there may just have to be consequences. 

After dinner he asks Mrs. Patmore if she has seen Thomas, and when she says she hasn't he can't help himself but grumble all the way up the winding stair and down the narrow passage.

He knocks twice upon the door of the men's bathroom, and, hearing no response from inside, tries the handle. As Andrew had said, it is locked.

"Mr. Barrow?" Charles raises his voice to be sure he can be heard clearly. There is no reply.

He tries the handle again and leans his shoulder against the door to be sure it it not merely stuck. There is no way it could have been locked from the outside; he is in possession of the only key.

"I know you're in there," he tries again, louder. He doesn't understand why Thomas is not answering; Charles had thought him much to old for such childish stunts. He hadn't wanted it to come to this, but he draws his keys from his pocket and begins to search them for right one. Come to think of it, he doesn't know if he has ever had to use this key before.

There is little in the world that Charles wishes to see less than Thomas Barrow in the nude, and he does not allow himself to consider what Thomas feels of it as he fits the key in the lock. "I am opening the door!"

It takes him a moment to register what he is seeing.

Thomas is in the bath, but he is clothed, thank goodness. He has fallen asleep, and the water is

red. The bathtub is filled with blood.

Charles feels he has been punched in the gut, suddenly finding himself gasping for breath and dizzy. He staggers against the doorframe, feels the keys slip from his hands to clatter on the tiled floor and feels bile rise in his throat.

He feels like he is moving in slow motion as he finally crosses the room and touches the water to confirm what he cannot believe.

The water is ice cold, and up close Thomas is grey and still.

Charles picks up his keys as he leaves the room and relocks the door behind him before going back downstairs. He is in a daze, some disconnected version of himself controlling his body, and he walks past the staff as if he cannot see them even though they are waiting on him to eat their supper. In his office he sits heavily in his chair and puts his head in his hands as the full weight of what has happened crashes down on him. 

Once he remembers that it is the correct thing to do, he telephones the morgue. Near the tail end of the call, Elsie lets herself into the room.

"Who was that?" she asks after he has hung up.

"The morgue," he replies, and his voice rings hollow in his own ears. "Thomas is dead."

Elsie stares openly at him. Her mouth moves as if to speak, but no sound comes out. 

"He cut his wrists in the men's bath."

Elsie does not crumple; her body does not move in space, but he can see her falling inside of herself. "Oh, no," she whispers, and he swallows heavily.

"They're sending someone to... collect him. They'll be here in about an hour." It's someone else's voice that comes out of his mouth, and he can tell that Elsie sees right through him, but this is not a conversation for now. For now they need to make sure that no one else knows before they are able to think of how to tell them.

For now they must eat supper with the rest of the staff and pretend that nothing is wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess i am just joining the short chapter but quick update gang now huh? new but probably for the best, i have a lot of little scene ideas for this but not like an actual overarching "plot" but hey when do i ever lol
> 
> thank you to the ppl who left such nice comments on the first chapter 💚💚

After supper, Charles sends everyone to bed. The meal has turned out to be one of the worst of his life, with everyone chattering away oblivious to the body upstairs while he and Elsie briefly meet eyes uncomfortably, but there's nothing to be done for it; he has not yet thought of a tasteful way to say what must be said and the people from the morgue are going to come at any minute now, and he does not want that to be how they find out. Besides, if he told them now, no one would get a wink of sleep all night!

(He knows he won't, at least.)

Of course, someone had commented on Thomas's absence, and that someone had been Andy.

"Did you find Mr. Barrow, Mr. Carson?"

Is was all Charles could do to meet his eyes and keep his voice steady as he replied, "yes, he felt poorly and retired early." And he remembered red water in a white room and felt he was going to see again what he had just eaten.

He doesn't look at Ms. Baxter, but he can feel her nervous fear, like she can smell the lie and the copper reek of blood it hides.

So when the meal is cleared, everyone goes to their rooms, and Charles follows them to wait outside the bathroom door so he can unlock it, while Elsie sits by the back door to let them in and show them up.

When he reaches the hall, Andrew is standing outside the men's bathroom. "It's still locked, Mr. Carson," he says plaintively, and Charles stares at him for a moment, trying to find an excuse.

"Go to bed, Andy," he says, and he can tell that the boy has realized something is wrong. Andrew slowly withdraws to his room, and no sooner does he close the door behind him then Charles sinks against the wall. He is so, so tired, and he is about to see the body of a man he has known for decades for the second time today.

The men from the morgue come, Elsie leading them fretfully, and Charles unlocks the door. Moonlight has turned the room blue, and the water purple, and Thomas looks very small and pale in the middle of it all. As Charles does not watch them put him into a black bag, Elsie tucks herself against him and shakes, almost crying. He has never seen her cry before, in all their years.

As the men carry the black bag down the hall, they pass Andrew's door. It is open, and Andrew watches them leave, his face turned away from Charles. Only when they had disappeared down the stairs does he look back at him and Charles sees the grief and panic and incomprehension in his wide eyes and taut mouth. 

Charles puts his arm around Elsie and whispers, "Go to bed, Andy."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hurg sorrry this took longer, my sister got appendicitis lol she's fine now but it's been kind of a lot and i have to take care of her opossum

That night, in the bed he shares with Elsie, Charles lies awake and stares at the ceiling. Though it is well past 3 in the AM, he cannot even say he is tired, not in his body at least. He feels raw, like a live wire, like he might at any moment leap out of his body and march right up (down) to wherever Thomas is now and pull him back down (up) to his body, and maybe back in time while he's at it, so he could say "how could you?" and "why would you?" and "what did i do wrong?"

But he knows, really.

He had seen how pale and withdrawn Thomas had become, towards the end. How he hardly spoke if not spoken to and didn't take his half-days. When the day was over, he didn't stay downstairs and play cards with Andy anymore, but retreated to his room, claiming he felt tired. All the thought that Charles had spared him was that at least he wasn't causing trouble. He hadn't thought...

To get straight to the heart of the matter, he hadn't thought Thomas capable of such a thing because he hadn't thought he was capable of feeling so low. He had always, on some level, thought Thomas hadn't any feelings at all, or at least not the same kinds of feelings normal people had. That he was a soulless husk of a person, a changeling that had burrowed down into the roots of the house and become impossible to get rid of, and that his only wants in life were for power, strife, and... carnal pleasures. To think that all that time he had been in such depths of sorrow and Charles hadn't even noticed?

When was the last time he had looked at Thomas, really looked into his eyes and thought on what he saw there? He couldn't remember. He hardly remembered what Thomas had looked like at all, before he had been pale and still in the bath, and he had been looking at him every day for how many years? The image of Thomas who sprang to his mind was one who hadn't existed for many years, he realized, and if Thomas had been hiding his true feelings the whole time... may never have existed at all.

It was with this unsettling thought that Charles was finally able to fall asleep.

He only slept a couple of hours, and when he woke again felt even more exhausted then the night before.

He and Elsie holed up in her sitting room for the better part of an hour before the servants breakfast to be sure of what Charles was going to say, but it did not make him feel better when the time came.

The staff rose from the table as he entered the room, but he did not sit. Looking forth at all of their oblivious faces, Andy and Baxter stood out; Andy's eyes were red and dull, and Baxter looked as a mouse that has realized the cat is there and is too close to flee from. Thomas's chair was conspicuously empty.

"I have an announcement to make," Charles said, finally, heavily. "Would someone please bring Ms. Patmore and Daisy in?"

And now there was a tension in the room, and now he had to say the words.

"Mr. Barrow passed last night."

Gasps swept the room, and shocked murmurs, and through it came one question: "what happened?"

And however much he wished he could, with all said and done and his own heart heavy with it, Charles could not lie.

"He took his own life."

Ms. Baxter began to weep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously credit to some of the sexy ppl who have commented for some of the ideas here
> 
> it has just occurred to me........ did carson and hughes even have their cottage at this point? or only after carson retired?? idk here's a little confession bc it's almost 1am and i'm feeling flirty i watched da in 2 weeks when i was 12 that's 5 years ago an i haven't watched more than the thomas-centric comps on the youtube since then so i really do not remember most of the show lmao. probably says something that my 2 main fandoms (this and warrior cats) are both for media i haven't Actually Looked At in years
> 
> anyhow tldr if i get smtn wrong........... yu can tell me bc i will not figure it out by myself lol


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soooooooo sorry for the delay on this, life got really awful for a moment there but it is back to being mostly okay now and I am determined to write again. short chapter but not much shorter than the ones already here I think, and I still have a number of ideas for this story though again not much happens in this bit. 
> 
> if this story is kind of heavy for you. I think it is going to get more lighthearted as it goes believe it or not. there are going to be some minor Ghost Shenanigans

Bates does not beat around the bush when he goes up to dress Robert for breakfast that morning, but in his defense he is not given much of a chance to. As soon as he enters the room, Robert can tell that something is heavy on his heart, see it in the hard set of his brow and the tired slope of his shoulders.

"Is everything alright, Bates?" he asks, standing as the man goes to pull out his clothes. "Not trouble with the law again, I hope?"

The joke, poor to begin with but further damaged by the very real and entirely unrelated tragedy that is actually weighing on him, does not land. Bates frowns for a moment, but he can't think of a way to pretty up what has happened in any way. Robert and him have known one another for a long time, and it feels awkward at the best of times to pussyfoot around things with him just because of how a valeting relationship is supposed to be.

"No, milord, it's Thomas." He means to continue, but Robert cuts him off.

"Oh, what has he done now?" Loath as he is to say it outright, Robert has been looking for a last straw for a while now. As much as Barrow has been a loyal and hard-working servant to his family for over a decade, the facts stand that an underbutler is a ludicrous position in this day and age, and Barrow has been known to cause problems beyond that.

"He killed himself," Bates says bluntly. 

"Good God!" Robert exclaims aghast, whipping around to look at Bates and nearly tearing his shirt with the movement. "You don't mean that?"

Bates only nods.

Shaking his head, Robert turns back to allow him to continue with his work. He feels suddenly horribly guilty for his previous thought, like the feeling of being unwanted might have… But he kills the thought before it can reach conclusion. At his heart, Robert is weak, and unwilling to think of things that make him uncomfortable.

This is the same thought process that impresses upon him that this is not the sort of thing one burdens ladies with the knowledge of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading uhhh btw if I was going to write something else either after this or at the same time what would ppl be interested in? I am trying to do something less depressing and my current thoughts are  
> \- richard centric probably about his relationship with his parents  
> \- thomas/clarkson uhh yeah it sounds weird but I think it could be interesting I think smithens has talked about this anyways I like it  
> \- werewolf or vampire or something funky like that just for funsies  
> \- ?? smut


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm sorry for the hurry, but Baxter's taken ill and I must attend to Lady Grantham myself this morning." Anna's speech is as hurried as her movements as she dresses Mary for breakfast. Her words knock into each other, and her hands are jerky.

Mary frowns, she hates when Anna understates things to spare her feelings. It makes her feel as though they are not friends.

"Is she very poorly? You seem worried." Though Mary tries to seem unaffected, she can feel Anna stiffen behind her, hear the thought before her answer.

"She'll be alright, my Lady. I'm only thinking on keeping Lady Grantham waiting." 

Mary is almost certain now that this is a lie, and it hurts her to think that after all this time Anna still doesn't trust her with her true thoughts.

"Well, then I'll let you go and see to her now. I am perfectly able to finish up the rest." There isn't much of a rest, really; since she cut her hair there's not been much to it on the daily beyond brushing it into shape. In the mirror she can see Anna hesitate again, before nodding and taking her leave.

Yes, there is most certainly something larger going on here. A lucky thing for her that there are many other people in this house who will not hide it from her.

***

In Cora's room it is Anna who comes, late, to dress her.

"Where is Baxter?" she asks, when Anna has hardly closed the door. It is not polite, but the status of her maid is something that has always been important to Cora, and she is perfectly willing to be impolite about it.

"Apologies, your Ladyship, but she's taken ill. I will be dressing you this morning." Anna doesn't meet her eyes, goes straight to the dresser and begins laying things out. Cora doesn't take it for an answer.

"Ill how? It's not the season for cold." Cora rises and joins Anna as she speaks, conscious of the time.

Anna doesn't answer at first, and Cora nearly repeats herself before she finally speaks.

"I don't know anything more about it than that, your Ladyship."

Cora subsides in her questioning reluctantly. If no one will tell her what has become of Baxter, she is ready to go and find it out herself. They do not speak more than two words a time for the rest of Anna's dressing her, both apparently stewing in their own thoughts, but Cora doesn't mind it. She only hopes that Baxter isn't so ill that she won't be able to see her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every time I sit down to bang out some more of this i say "this chapter will be longer" and every time I am wrong. great apologies for this and for the delay, still a lot going on in my life


End file.
